Blommer Chocolate Drops Line Automation

Blommer Chocolate was installing a new drops line. Chocolate drops are similar to chocolate chips, except they’re larger in diameter and flatter. Chocolate drops are made on a machine with an extruder and conveyor. They’re cooled on the conveyor before getting peeled off and into bins.

After the success of our automation upgrade project with Blommer, we were brought in again to help with the chocolate drops line. This project utilized an updated pigging system to clean the lines between the conches and chocolate holding tanks feeding the drops machine. We used many of the standards from the first projects—along with some upgrades—to develop the new screens with the new equipment.

Drops Line Solution

• Inductive Automation’s Ignition SCADA platform

  • Microsoft SQL Server

  • Previously developed templates and UDTs

• Siemens S7-1500 PLCs

  • Integration of new and existing PLCs for pigging system route validation

Implementation Summary

With the automation upgrade project already complete, most of the building blocks for this project were already in place. This project consisted of a pigging system, storage tanks, SWECO screeners, and a ton of valves and pumps. Building the screens for the new line was pretty straightforward, and only required some upgrades to the SWECO logic for a more modernized version of their filters. The upgrades in Ignition included a load balancing algorithm to spread out the flow of chocolate to multiple SWECOs to equalize flow through them, as well as the ability to lock out certain units for in-process cleaning.

In addition to the new screens, we also needed to modify the existing system to allow operators to pump chocolate to the drops line tanks. This required adding additional rows to the database for the pig route validation logic to work properly. Because we had developed a powerful system on the original project, it took mere minutes to deploy the route validation for this implementation.

Results

By working again with Corso Systems, Blommer Chocolate was able to rapidly deploy this system to meet an aggressive construction timeline. Leveraging the existing template library and UDTs sped up development time and reduced the overall cost of the project both in terms of development and functional testing.

Another benefit of adding the chocolate drops project after enterprise integration, was that tying the drops line and recipes into the production schedule was a breeze. It simply required additional rows in the production model for the equipment, and then the scheduling tool was able to schedule the line immediately.